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Comment by yetihehe | Hacker News Reader

Why do we still ignore it?

1. Mass media is owned by wealthy people, who do not want other people to question how they amassed that wealth, so corruption is not a widely discuted problem. As long as it doesn't touch everyone personally, it will stay this way.

2. Changing it requires organising. That "organising" is typically called government. It's pretty hard to install a whole new government. Reinstalling government in too slow manner will just reinfect newly elected officials with corruption and won't rid of the disease.

3. After changing government, there are still many wealthy people who will try to corrupt new government. Preventing that requires whole new system of governance, but it is not invented yet.

4. Hard to find THE perpetrators. Too many officials and too many corrupters, which do not make big universally regarded as bad moves. They corrupt little-by-little aka boiling the frog. Many wealthy people and officials are not actually corrupted, we just don't know which are.

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This comment focuses heavily on wealthy people. There is also the potential for "normal" people in that new government to be corrupted by power or the chance to make extra money.

At least in my experience, the local level politicians are more likely to be corrupt. Like city planners, district attorneys, etc. Their pay is lower so they are more likely to look for ways to make extra money. Or they might be doing improper things not for money, but for ideology/power (ie they might have joined despite the lower pay to make a difference, but they think they are doing the right thing even if breaking the rules). Like magistrates ignoring the law to rule against someone, or police and the DA holding a known incorrect charge against someone. Etc

Just wanted to point out that it's not all rich people, that many times it starts out as normal or poor people who want what they never had, and to never return to being poor. Although, those people may be more likely to bebecome rich since they're playing outside the system, not paying taxes, etc.

> Like city planners

Where I live, the planners are widely considered to have been corrupt for decades. Planners are ordinary, medium-salary bureaucrats, dealing with hugely-valuable property and hugely-wealthy businessmen. Once the rot has set in, it seems to be really hard to remove it.

I would add that for many people that try to change the Government from within end up becoming what they start out fighting against just to be in the process.

Here is what happens: people with appetites (easily blackmail-able) are promoted from early on and given access to resources like campaign funds and seats at the table. Morally strong people are shunned and elbowed out, or seduced.

Then it becomes a game of "Well, play ball and keep getting the gravy, or don't and we show and tell."

This is why we have the Denny Hasterts of the world: empty-suit nobodies who come out of nowhere to become speaker of the house, then are disappeared in a puff of hushed-up scandal when they are no longer useful or can't keep a lid on their appetites.

It's ridiculous that this isn't discussed in the education system. Even if it isn't intentional (it is) at some level stupidity becomes indistinguishable from malice.

I used to hear this but not believe that people would be groomed so brazenly. Then I saw it happen before my own eye in several global organizations (not government), now I believe, as you do, that this is one of the greatest sources of corruption: the corrupt work hard to raise people behind them who are just as corrupt, if not worse, because they can be controlled.

And those who don't usually get kicked out.

I used to know a couple former state senators who played key roles in getting a prominent state senator of the opposite party convicted for corruption. They immediately lost support of their own party and were voted out. One of them was badly frightened in the process and dropped out of the public eye entirely.

They had a lot to say about the workings of our legislature, including that the conflict between parties was largely a sham, and that if you wanted to stay in office, you participated in the quiet deals by which they all divided up the spoils.

Or they end up quitting in disappointment and disgust or not bothering to begin with.

Exactly. That's how point 2 works (exchanging too slow).

Even if you install 100% new government, it's likely that some of the new people will arrive to same old conclusions sooner or later.

Corruption is just too natural consequence of someone managing resources without being directly affected by outcomes.

Yeah, that's why I wrote several points. They are ALL working at once which results in hard to beat corruption. Fixing just one point will not help.

They constantly try to escape

From the darkness outside and within

By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.

But the man that is will shadow

The man that pretends to be.

Transparency, and hence able to checked by others, is the only solution I can see.

I think you have some valid points however you also have one massive bias running through your statement: That the route of all corruption is wealthy people. I see you have found your scape goat to the problem.

Wealthy people are just people - and there are many people who are not wealthy who are incredibly corrupt and more willing to take on the corruption risk. However it's much more convenient to paint wealthy people as the problem with the system then ascribe the problem to human nature as a whole or systemic problem.

Bad take. Although there are decent wealthy people, the proportions are different. The correlation between material success and human decency is negative and this needs to be known; indeed, one of the most important cultural battles in this war with Capital is to correct the biases many people hold that enable them to believe their ruling class is somehow "different". It's not.

Saying that there are some non-wealthy people who are also horrible, something we already know, is classic what-aboutism.

People who thrive in managerial hierarchies (private sector bureaucracies) tend not to be the best among us. Rather, they tend to be the cancer cells of the human species. They are individually fit at the expense of the organism, and while we might hope for a future in which the matter is different, right now the best tools we have to deal with them (e.g., chemotherapy, radiation) are blunt, destructive, and unfortunately quite brutal.

Your take is a really bad take riddled with falsisms and deeply concerning thoughts.

>>"The correlation between material success and human decency is negative and this needs to be known" - Again this a myth that permeates society since the beginning days and sounds like you are targeting a population.

>>"one of the most important cultural battles in this war with Capital" - War with the capital? Nobody is at war with the capital except the fringe right who have already shown their inability to understand the complexity of US institutions and how the world works except through violence to serve their own needs.

>>"People who thrive in managerial hierarchies (private sector bureaucracies) tend not to be the best among us. Rather, they tend to be the cancer cells of the human species." - I am seriously concerned about your well-being.

It sounds like you are trying to make a call to violence based on some incredibly fringe thoughts.

> >>"one of the most important cultural battles in this war with Capital" - War with the capital? Nobody is at war with the capital except the fringe right who have already shown their inability to understand the complexity of US institutions and how the world works except through violence to serve their own needs.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you said, but it sounds like you interpreted "Capital" in their sentence as "the government" (or maybe "capitol" as in the building?). I'm pretty sure they meant capital as in "capitalism".

Could be - then I would take back my comment about war with Capital. However it makes the individuals comments less clear. Who is at war with Capital i.e. factories, mines, and railroads ?!?

Incidentally, both chemotherapy machines and radiation machines are made by corporations. Corporations which are built and run by managers and executives which you could say "thrive in managerial hierarchies".

The value they add to our society and lives is tremendous and calling them "cancer" only shows your bias and lack of rationality.

Get back to your Jira tickets. You have standup in 10 minutes and you better be able to justify your daily wage.

--Your boss

Everyone answers to someone - nobody is immune even if it looks like they are.

Arguably true, also irrelevant.

I hope someone is paying you handsomely to post pro-corporate cappie nonsense here, because if you're doing it for free, that's just sad.

For a serious response to what you said about modern medicine and the role of corporations in it... technological growth is possible under socialist as well as capitalist systems. It wasn't clear until the 1980s who was ahead and, on that, the reason the US "won" the Cold War (although we really didn't; we just lost less) is not that capitalism is superior--to be clear, the USSR was also deeply flawed, and Stalin was a paranoid butcher for whose actions there is no excuse--but that capitalism was a sea empire and the USSR was a land empire, and modern conflict is unfavorable to land empires. That's it.

Land empires have to integrate people. Sea empires can point their cannons and say, "Give me money or die." The USSR had to integrate hundreds of different ethnicities. Capitalism just had to overthrow a few democratically-elected socialists and install dictators (see: Salvador and Allende). Capitalism was playing on easy mode; the USSR was playing on hard mode, and eventually fell after a severe mistake (Afghanistan) led to extreme internal dissent and resurgent nationalism.

Had it been the other way around--a capitalist land empire against a socialist sea empire--it would have been the socialists who were wealthy enough to build modern medicine.

How is what you are spouting off about communism vs capitalism related to my comment "everyone answers to someone". That comment works for capitalism, socialism, communism ... every system.

Wealthy people are not corrupted, they are doing the corruption. As I said in other comment, not every wealthy man is a source of corruption. But poor people are not a source of corruption, because they don't have resources to corrupt officials. And poor officials are typically easier to corrupt. Again, probably way less than half of officials are corrupt.

> However it's much more convenient to paint wealthy people as the problem with the system then ascribe the problem to human nature as a whole or systemic problem.

Poor people don't have means to corrupt others, that's why corruption is typically coming from wealthy people.

Sorry I completely disagree with your view. It doesn't stack against how I've seen the world work.

I think you are talking in very broad brushes with terms like wealthy and poor people. I will say that across the distribution of wealth corruption happens at all levels. I am not disagreeing that some wealthy people are corrupt but your notion that they are the only corrupt people is ridiculous.

It depends on what you mean by "corrupt".

If "corrupt" means "willing to cheat", then obviously that is not limited to the rich. If "corrupt" means "willing to abuse power bestowed on them by society", then it is literally impossible for the poor and disenfranchised, whom society has given nothing, to be corrupt, because they cannot abuse what they do not have.

People of all social classes participate in corruption, and have to do so, to survive. It is only those who have power who can be said to be abusing power, and when we talk about corruption, we're generally talking not about all bad human behaviors, but more specifically about the corrosion of institutions and social trust that occurs when those in charge use their positions toward unjust ends.

> If "corrupt" means "willing to cheat"

Since when it doesn't?!

> If "corrupt" means "willing to abuse power bestowed on them by society"

You've just described any public administration: not rich (working on it thought) but corrupted to the bone.

It's more about power. Wealthy people have more power and their corruption causes more widespread effects. Plus, uncorrupted officials don't support corrupted subordinates, so high-level corruption breeds more low-level corruption, or as they say "The fish spoils from the head".

But corruption itself if used to become wealthy. Such a rich person will be corrupted and corrupt furthermore.

Positions of power will attract people who are willing to be corrupted. Is a very important motivator for politicians.

Being rich is the end result, not the starting point. The starting point is a poor society but with valuable points of power which are not privately owned.

Again it's not about wealth, it's about people and power. Wealth has power attributes to it and is many cases a proxy to power.

However many government officials have incredible amounts of power but little wealth. Look at any communist party officials over the history of time you will see incredibly levels of corruptions without any wealth AND they aren't doing corrupt work for other people, they are doing it for their own benefit (To refute your idea that some wealthy person is behind their corruption).

Poor people can absolutely be corruptors:

Lets look at getting a driver's license in Brazil. It's widely known you can pay to pass your test, and driving instructors near ubiquitously act as middlemen. I know many people who have admitted to paying. They are not rich.

There are many stories I've heard over the years of minor corruptions like this. Paying off cops to ignore irregular documentation, paying off an official to get ahead in line ... this is absolutely beyond rich vs poor.

It is the rich who make these systems. The poor just live in them.

It's both rich and poor who corrupt such systems though.

And prisoners in concentration camps are responsible for their own famines. If only they would eat less.

How can you hold responsible people who have no economic freedom?

Everybody has the freedom to follow the rules or try to skirt around them.

> But poor people are not a source of corruption, because they don't have resources to corrupt officials

Any policeman in a third-world country taking a random 10 dollars equivalent on the street from a random street vendor would disagree. Just because that kind of corruption hardly is world-changing does not mean it doesn't happen - I'd even wager that most global corruption is small-scale, low-amount by relatively poor people towards relatively low-ranking officials.

Good argument. I think such bottom-level corruption is caused by top-level corruption and general demoralisation of society. When you have low-level worker who is corrupted, but higher-levels are moral, you can just denounce that one worker. If higher levels are also corrupt, you have no one to appeal to, so corruption thrives. So, fixing corruption from top should be first, but then low-level corruption should be stamped out as soon as possible.

Agree - and from statistics we know the long-end of the distribution tail (i.e. smaller impacts) in aggregate can have power. To be clear I am not disputing wealthy people can be corrupt I'm saying that it's widespread amongst humanity and not one group of individuals.

Is corruption not the undue influence of personal financial gain over political decisions?

Wealth is extremely important to the conversation, because corruption comes from individuals and corporations leveraging their wealth to influence politics outside of the democratic process.

We can try to design systems that prevent people who want to throw money at politicians from getting their way, but they will still be trying to do so.

Yes it’s systemic. Wealthy people aren’t mustache-twirling evil for wanting to leverage their wealth. They are making the most logical decision from their position.

But if the system continues concentrating more wealth among a smaller subset of the population, without putting up increasing safeguards against its influence, then corruption over democracy seems to be the natural systemic outcome.

"____ people are just people" is one of those thought-terminating things in this situation. It is true, but the degree to which it is useful depends highly on context.

Truly powerfully wealthy people are a small group, globally. They are just people in the sense that they eat and shit and love their moms like everyone else, yes.

But in their ability to shape the world around them they have much more capacity than almost everyone else. That is the topic here, and in that sense they are not "just normal people."

Saying that rich people are the problem is not saying that all rich people are a problem. They're very different assertions.

It's saying that people being rich is the problem. Having a desirable fungible thing means the ability to trade that desirable thing for favors. Being able to accumulate more of that thing means an unfair ability to do that. And that's corruption.

Maybe, corruption by peasants doesn't have that much impact compared to corruption en masse via wealthy people in the place where he lives? However, I do acknowledge that corruption is not just caused by wealthy people. The place where I live people have to do corruption if they want to live average quality life because the salary is so low. With the current salary, if they work honestly, they can't even afford a house for 15 years.

Might I suggest that rigging an economy so that honest people cannot prosper from work does excuse corruption, but that the underlying policy is intended to make everyone complicit in massive corruption at the highest level?

> Maybe, corruption by peasants doesn't have that much impact compared to corruption en masse via wealthy people in the place where he lives?

Exactly yes. "Peasant's" just don't have enough money to meaningfully bribe someone.

> With the current salary, if they work honestly, they can't even afford a house for 15 years.

Wow, that seems like a nice place to live. I built a house (started in 2019, finished this year) with credit for 30 years, but I earn about twice the average in my country. Building it was the cheaper option, it was projected to be worth 50% more after building, now it's worth twice more.

You're conflating the people who commit the corrupt acts with the people who pay for the corrupt acts. Corrupt acts typically require some sort of payment, enough payment that it's worth the risk, so it would need to be significant relative to the salary. The poorer you are, the cheaper it is to get you to do a corrupt act. The wealthier you are in comparison, the cheaper it is (relative) to get someone to do a corrupt act.

But to your point, it takes two to tango, the person paying for the corruption and the person carrying out the corruption. I think the OP's point is the wealthy are the ones paying for it and asking for the deeds to be done.

Having said that, there are other types of corruption like CYA coverups we see in the news from police departments and justice systems. The Breonna Taylor grand jury result comes to mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Breonna_Taylor

While trick down economics probably doesn't work, trickle down corruption probably does.

People see that rich people are getting ahead by corruption, so they emulate them and that is their rationale for breaking the rules.

> Preventing that requires whole new system of governance, but it is not invented yet.

The system has nothing to do with it. It is the people.

Yeah, I call "system of governance" the entirety of rules that are enforced between people. Just people without serious system of governance are called "a mob". People are the hardware for governance, but like computer without operating system, people without governance system don't do much besides being there.

As long as we have automatic rulers (countries with automatically powerful government) corruption will be there. Basically corruption is profitable so that is why it happens. If we had democracy, it will go down significantly, because is is not profitable to corrupt the majority. You have to offer them more than the damage you will do to them with your actions, which is unprofitable, and maybe not corruption at that point since you made a deal with the “to be harmed” people, not their ruling minority.

The answer is to limit the concentration of power. That is the Libertarian argument, if there is no lever to pull, there wont be corruption issues with people fighting over that lever. Instead, order should arise naturally as an emergent system from the ground up, always voluntarily with mutual benefit and never under the threat of force. A small corrupt goverment is always better than a massive corrupt goverment, and all systems of control eventually corrupt.

I’ve always felt that this perspective entirely ignores that government is not the only source of extant power and that “order should arise naturally as an emergent system from the ground up always voluntarily with mutual benefit” is woefully idealistic (and functionally impossible) as we are not operating from a clean slate. There are already powerful people/entities that will take immediate advantage of governmental reduction in power to increase their own without any consideration of consent and/or mutual benefit.

As an idea, sure - it’s lovely; but, if enacted, I don’t see how it doesn’t lead to something akin to feudalism. I’d even go so far as to suggest that it has the feeling of an ideological strategy by the already powerful to get the average person to ‘unilaterally disarm’ their own collective power. I’d love to be proved wrong, of course.

That's doesn't solve it.

In France there is a lot of corrupted mayors, even in small villages/cities, it's hard to limit make the power less concentrated, you need accountability and making harder to be corrupted without being caught immediatly.

Limiting the opportunities for corruption is definitely important. The libertarian approach goes at it from another angle: limiting the damage that corrupt politicians can do, by limiting their authority over the rest of us. Seems to me that both approaches can work in tandem.

It doesn't works that's well, you often end up with bureaucracy nonsense.

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